So much for the freedom of leaving them idle by the putting mat.
Pardon me while I lift this couch.
Sigh.
Cats love anything that’s small and moves.
Hunting instinct you know.
It does remind me of a comedian who talked about his childhood toy army men, driven by the cat under the refrigerator like a sadistic NVA guard pushing POWs into the Hanoi Hilton.
My youngest girl cat loves refrigerator magnets, which really don’t move all that much. She keeps plucking them off the front of the frig, causing whatever they were holding up to fall down. Gravity you know. I’m not sure she’s familiar with the idea though.
Odd little thing.
Growing up, our cat used to love watching golf on the TV. On the green, when the golfer would putt, the cat would follow the little white ball with its head, and when the ball would fall into the hole (and disappear), she would paw at the hole. “Where did the white moving speck-of-mystery go?” 
Our current little girl cat will not be satisfied until she’s successfully knocked every single pen on a given table/desk/etc. onto the floor.
Pfft! Have you experienced the thrill of your cat carrying a golf ball to the bathtub to play with it in the middle of the night? Huh? If not then you sir know nothing about the joys of cats and golf balls.
Boy do I know that one! I have a zillions toys just for my cats, but the funnest thing in the world is knocking over my pens, paper clips, fingernail clippers, tweezers, etc.
My girl Lily has recently become fascinated by these two mini-Koosh balls I got, fetching them for me ad nauseum. So cute.
Shhh! They might hear…
If you think cats love golf balls . . . try ping-pong balls, sometime.
My cats prefer the ring from the milk jug to any toy I’ve purchased with the possible exception of the laser pointer. Great cat toy! I’ve gotten Yogi to go about 6 feet up the wall with it!
That’s exactly what I was going to say! 
When you get done fishing the golfballs from under your couch, come lift my couch and get all these cat-toys out, m’kay?
What is it about the ring from the milk jug? My cats could have a room full of catnip mice and fluffy angora scarves (don’t ask–Sirius loves them), and the milk ring is the absolute funnest thing in the whole wide world.
And if you can manage it (because it takes no small amount of skill to let go at the right time), try to make it look like the laser pointer dot ran and hid under the couch. It’ll keep 'em there for minutes, at least.
My cat cares not for any of this stuff.
I’ve known this since the 1946 H. Allen Smith novel Rhubarb about a golf-ball stealing cat that inherited a baseball team.
Agreed. It’s like a bonus prize – buy a gallon of milk, get a free cat toy!
The reigning cheap-o favorite around our house, however, is Q-Tips. Toss a few of them on the floor and the cats go bonkers for hours (or until they’ve eaten all the cotton off the tips).
In the mid-70’s at the La Purisima Golf Course in California, there was a feral cat that would occasionally charge onto the green and run off with a golf ball. Somewhere out in the sage and creosote bushes there is probably a small mountian of old golf balls!
We used to have some practice golf balls around the house (plastic, with holes, like a wiffle ball) that one of the cats would pick up in his mouth. How does a cat pick up a regular golf ball?
Ping pong ball in the bathtub. Our cats used to love that. I always considered it a sort of feline intelligence test. Would the cat wait for the ball at the drain end, where the ball would always roll back to them.
And we had one cat that would go nuts for Legos. Just the sound of one dropped from a couple inches onto the kitchen counter would bring her running. I think the square corners give a randomness to the way it bounces that makes it seem more like a little fleeing rodent.
Man, I really gotta get me some ping pong balls. I have a bathtub and two cats who could use some exercise.
I used to live in a townhouse complex next to the golf course. My neighbor’s cat would frequently bring golf balls home.
One day, the cat was sitting in the middle of the fairway. A foursome came up the fairway as far as the cat and began looking for one guy’s ball. After a few minutes, he gave up and dropped a new one. After they’d played through, the cat got up and walked away. He’d been sitting on the ball all along.